Monday, November 3, 2008

Teach 'em a lesson.

I was thinking the other day about Obama's desire to tax only those with high incomes, the 1% or 5% or 10%. What he's neglecting is that those 5% already pay a huge portion of the federal income tax revenue, 30 to 60% of the revenue depending on what top percentage you're referring to, and in contrast the 40% of the population paying no taxes at all.

What Obama is missing is that it wouldn't take a large number of people rebelling to drastically sink the tax revenue. What would happen if these people decided to simply take a year off. If they're so wealthy as Obama thinks they are, they could certainly afford to do so. What would happen if the upper middle class and the upper classes were to decide to limit their lifestyles and suffer some inconveniences in order to put the maximum amount possible into tax-exempt accounts. What if corporations were to increase their matching contributions to 401k's, not only reducing their own taxable profit, but further increasing the tax sheltering their employees do.

With all the deficit spending the feds do they probably wouldn't immediately cut a single program in response to even a dramatic downfall in revenue. As a matter of fact the response of Democrat/Socialists would be to simply raise taxes. (That's exactly what Oregon's Multnomah county did the last time). It may not change anything immediately but it would sure send a visible and I think powerful signal.

Instead of paying the tax on the Tea, we may just dump it in the harbor and see what Obama can do with it then.

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Reagan

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." -Reagan

Thatcher

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.